What's new in Prism 6.03?

This page lists the changes in Prism Windows from 6.02 to 6.03 (which was released Sept 9, 2013). If you are updating from an earlier release, see what was new in 6.01 and 6.02. 

This page is for Windows only. A separate page lists what's new in 6.0d Mac.

New features

• You can choose symbol shape, border color and border thickness for outliers in box-whisker graphs.
• The Delete Sheet dialog is wider so you can see long sheet names, and taller so there is less need to scroll.
• You can choose to plot symbols at censored points only for survival graphs showing staircase with ticks.
• Reports sample size of each group in the results of Mann-Whitney test.
• Enabled the 'Format Points' menu item for Grouped graphs showing individul points.
• When entering two line titles, you can now use Alt-Enter (as well as Shift-Enter) to start the second line. 

Important analysis bugs fixed

• The Wilcoxon rank sum test is a nonparametric test that is part of the column statistics analysis that compares the computed median with a theoretical value you enter. Prism 6.02 (Windows) and 6.0c (Mac) introduced an bug such that the P value was always reported P<0.0001. This bug was not in 6.00, 6.0a, 6.01, or 6.0b, and is fixed in 6.03 and 6.0d. 
• The Wilcoxon matched pairs test (part of t test analysis) was incorrect when you chose to use method of Pratt to handle the rare situation where the two values were equal in some rows.
• Comparing three or more survival curves using the Gehan-Wilcoxon survival method gave incorrect results. (Comparing two data sets was always fine.) 

Other analysis bugs fixed

• Column statistics repeated some results from the previous column when a data table column was entirely empty or excluded.
• All the equations in the Binding Kinetics family of equations will now, by default, plot curves begininning at X=0 rather than the minimum X value in the data table.

• When frequency distribution is done with grouped data and each replicate is individually binned, the column statistics show the column statistics of the means, not of individual replicates. But the sample size n was the total number of replicates, but is now the number of means to match the mean and SD etc. 

• Median Survival is reported incorrectly for a data table that has some X values without corresponding Y values, and when the curve was horizontal at Y=50%, making the concept of a single value for median survival quite arbitrary.

• In very rare circumstances, nonlinear regression would show the initial values as the results, with no message that there was a math error.  

• After inserting a blank column into the source data table with two groups, the survival parameters dialog pointlessly disabled options to compare two groups and enabled options to compare three or more groups.

• Mann Whitney test would crash/freeze with huge data sets (hundreds of thousands of values).

• Improved computation of critical values of t distribution used for confidence intervals. Difference is usually only in the fifth digit of precision, but occasionally is in the third or fourth digit.

• X and Y values were swapped in Interpolated X values result subsheet of the Fit spline analysis.

• In rare cases, a simulated curve generated from a model defined with a differential equation periodically dropped to zero.

Important bugs fixed

• Crash after adding a data set to a graph, or sometimes replacing or removing data set.
• Graph was exported as a small image or invisible if some of the groups had column title but no data.
• If graphs were embedded in Excel, Prism would freeze after you try to save changed graph back to Excel. 

Changes in installation, activation and startup

• If silent activation is configured and the IT admins have updated the xml with a new serial number before the expiration date, Prism will silently use it without showing any dialogs.
• When a serial number expires, Prism now display a dialog with the choices to enter a new number, go to our website, or quit.
• Changed Prism so that if <check-for-updates> exists in startupconfig.xml, then Prism disables the corresponding check box in the preferences dialog.
• Fixed misleading silent activation error message when connection to the GraphPad server works fine but the server returns an error.
• Improved the error message (code XX) when Prism detects that the system clock has been tampered with.
• Prism now only contacts the LabArchives server when needed, instead of every time Prism starts.
• With activation, Prism now sends the version number to the GraphPad server.
• New alert if user tries to enter a masked serial number (using ### instead of actual numbers).
• Dialog that warns of expiration in next 30 days now offers place to enter the replacement serial number to make it easier to handle renewal.

Other bugs fixed

• Characters <, >, " and & copied from MS Excel appeared as &lt;, &gt;, &quote; and &amp; when pasted into column titles.
• Prism did not run scripts automatically if it was launched by editing a Prism object within another program.
• Made it possible to align or distribute objects in Prism, even if several objects are grouped.
• The Change Graph Type dialog appeared with incorrect default graph family when switching to graph, if it had already been viewed before data was entered.
• The graph/axis title appeared truncated up to the last existing '%' character, if it was being set via script command inside loop.
• Pasting into an Info sheet table was truncated if some of the values included comma separator.
• Fixed an empty tooltip that appeared on graphs under Chinese locale.
• Fixed data set drop down in the Format Graph dialog to show non-ASCII characters correctly.
• Fixed crash on opening P4 graphs.
• Formatting of autocomplete text.
• Wrong tooltip shown in gallery, when several projects are open.  
• After running a script with Prism minimized, the Prism window is now restored to its previous size (not full screen).
• Impossible to edit super long Y axis titles.
• Prism made a call to the LabArchives server every time it started up. Now it does so only if you use the LabArchives menu.
• Super-scripted numbers looked bad in the layout while they were plotted fine on the graph sheet.
• Graphs were pasted to the layout in a very tiny size if the first group on data table was empty.
• When a grouped graph was pasted to PowerPoint, X-axis numbering set to be row titles appeared as row numbers.
• Grouped graph embedded to powerpoint would not update if some of the groups had a column title but had no data.
• Ghost columns (or bars) appear when all data on that data table column are excluded, or when the column is empty except for a minus, period or "e".
• When pasting a column of data by script, the insertion point moves to the next column, so the next paste it to a different column. Prior to this fix, if you pasted a single Y column by script, the insertion point remained in the column that was pasted into, so the next paste operation overwrote existing data.  
• Too hard to move custom ticks labels: the two-sided arrow pointer did not appear.
• Master legends changed to column title text when project file was re-opened, send to PP or Word.
• Improved autocorrection which sometimes caused a crash when preferences file was damaged.
• Fixed broken help links for two-way ANOVA and other. 
• Duplicating family automatically updated the sheet name only for the first linked graph but not the other linnked graphs.
• Crash when changing the order of data set on graph. 
• Removed automatic gray floating note incorrectly saying that some error bars were clipped at the axis limit.
• Removed unnecessary column titles from the Two-way ANOVA results sheet.
• Removed unexpected extra lines that were plotted on the graph with two segments for X axis. 
• Improved snapping of graphs on layouts (removed "vibration"). 
• Fixed the problem when one of the choices of "Number format" dropdown for X axis disappeared after deleting numeric data from the data table. 
• If you hid an axis, Prism now also hides grid lines attached to that axis.  
• Prism forgot your setting to not "show censored subjects on graph" on Survival analysis parameters dialog. 
• Graph legend sometimes disappeared when Prism 5 file opened on Prism 6.
• Crash on using Magic tool 
• Graph appeared to disappear from page when you edited the graph title.
• Bottom part of bars becoming partially invisible after changing their appearance from showing individual points to bars.
• Couldn't open some files with damaged info sheets. 
• Scale bars sometimes disappear when file is opened.
• Removed duplicated sample data set in Grouped tab.
• If you check option to run script on launching embedded prism object, Prism will ignore Close and Exit commands. ??

• After adding\deleting data set(s), the quality of graph with points, embedded in PowerPoint, becomes low.  

• Custom range of X axis doesn't work if row titles are used for labeling.  

• Y title doesn't get moved to the proper position after Magic.  

• Error bars on negative bars are plotted incorrectly.  

• Errors bars for 'Column mean' graphs are wrong when the axis has a log scale.  

• Crash  when trying to undo of plotting of linear or nonlinear regression curve on the graph.  

• Crash when switching between graph and analysis, that plot curve on it. 

• Misleading silent activation error message appears if connection to the GraphPad server is alive but the server returns an error.  

• Prism does not try to silently activate if the old license has expired and the new serial number is already in the StartupConfig.xml.  

• Column title tab in 'Format data table' dialog is sometimes corrupted.  

• Prism crashes after trying to break link to .xls file via 'Edit Links' menu.  

• Custom ticks location can not be changed after they have been repositioned manually.  

• Horizontal caps at the ends of error bars are absent if size of corresponding symbol is set to 0.  

• Prism uses column titles to label axis when row titles was specified, after switching Prism versions.    

• Improved labeling of hazard ratio (and its reciprocal) in survival analysis.  

• Problems formatting row titles on graph after deleting/excluding row with data from data table.   

• Fixed outdated copyright for prismupdate.exe  

• Some fonts looks slightly corrupted, after pasting graph to MS Word and MS PowerPoint and then saving it as PDF.   

• Legends were staggered, rather than aligned.

• If you chose zero digits after the decimal for values on Y axis, Prism labeled the axis using one digit after the decimal.  

• If you change the size of one graph on a layout, Prism again shows the dialog offering to change sizes of other graphs to match.

• Improved trigger for alert to notify user when some points appear outside the axis limit. 

• Images imported onto a Layout in Prism 5 were sometimes clipped when the file was opened in Prism 6.

• If a data set included the value 0.0, the box-and-whisker plot was incorrect when plotted on a logarithmic axis.

• Some Prism 5 files would not open in Prism 6.

• Disabled the Position Object command for axis titles, because they are automatically centered.

• When changing a grouped graph from box-and-whiskers to symbols, the border color got lost.

• In some cases, the graph did not update after data were removed from a data table.

• After a script completed, in some case the Prism window was not restored to the correct size.

• After inserting new columns into a data table, it was not always possible to enter data.
• Extra white space was added above the graph to exported graphs without an Y axis.
• Error bars on negative column bars were sometimes plotted incorrectly.
• The connecting line disappeared starting from the beginning of the gap, if 'When axis is discontinuous, also place gap in line' checkbox was selected.
• Prism search plugin rarely caused Windows Explorer to crash on Windows XP.
• Graphs sometimes seemed to disappear from the graph work area after moving them across the page.  
• Tables embedded on a graph which was then pasted to PowerPoint were sometimes invisible or huge. 
• The column for editing column titles in the Format Data Table dialog was sometimes very narrow.